Katherine and Katherine Gorge (Nitmiluk National Park).Stayed 1 night at river view big 4, another night up in the national park.
Drive from Mataranka to Katherine was nice and quick.
Stopped in at Cutta Cutta caves just before reaching Katerine
Great limestone caves, very hot and humid down there. Not like any other cave we’ve seen before. Hardly any moisture. Interesting bats and snakes living in there too.
Arriving in Katherine we still hadn’t decided which caravan park to stay at.
Checked in at the Nitmiluk camp ground, got ourselves a powered site and booked in a sunset dinner cruise.
After lunch we booked our short Heli-Muster chopper flight, all very casual about it, just turn up and away you go. Went up in a little 4 seater Robinson(?) and flew over all 13 gorges. Quite a bumpy ride in some spots, very windy.
I would recommend doing an early morning flight to avoid the wind and the heat, or an afternoon one if possible.
Great view of the gorges and the surrounding landscape.
Dave wore his geeky GoPro camera on his head to record the whole thing. Looks great! haha
We both felt a bit sea sick afterwards. Bumpy flight and occasionally fiddling with camera settings did it to us. Took a good hour to recover after.
Drove back and fell asleep in the heat
Gave a thursty wallaby a bowl of water, pulled a plastic bag out of it’s mouth (bloody rubbish!) and fed it a carrot. Quite friendly little fella.
4:15pm drove down to our sunset cruise – oh what an interesting mix of people! Everything from a fully dressed up big shot cowboy businessman (who made sure everyone heard about the important matters he was attending to on his blackberry the entire trip) through to pot smoking hippies.
A huge number of bats lined the river bank, all just chilling there upside down.
Bats! so many bats
Cruise was nice. 3 boats in the different gorges. Short walk in between.
Dinner on the boat was good, a mix up on the seating so they had to boat down a few extra chairs.
We ended up on a table with two older couples from Melbourne.
Saw 3 freshwater crocs on the cruise (there aren’t too many more in these gorges)
